Beguiler

[leftovers5]

For Beguiler discussion.

 

[ShizzDawgg]

Not going to put in any input, seeing as I fair strong against rogues and warriors in most situations, but I usually get raped by casters and I always lose to healers.

I usually get killed by:

• Necromancer
• Wizard
• Cleric
• Mystic
• Disciple

I occasionally get killed by:

• Dragoon (usually when server is really laggy)
• Ninja
• Pyromancer (only the 1 actually good pyromancer on the server, futurizedhandgun)
• Paladin
• Samurai
• Bloodmage

I kill:

• Dreadknight
• Runeblade
• Bard
• Ranger

If the server was lag free, I'd probably kill most of the people that I occasionally lose to, such as ninja and paladin.

Personally, beguiler is fine. I don't fully agree with the silence in terms of piggify, but you have to understand that it does cost a fair amount of my mana to use, and besides ranger I am the only class that relies completely on skill shots because pulse is pretty inefficient when you are such a squishy class (and yes, le sheep counts as a skillshot -_-).

 

[PernixPike]

I believe in the next patch Piggify will no longer silence debuffs like Chakra and HealingChorus.

 

[ShizzDawgg]

Plaguebomb also isn't silenced by voidsong, which is posted in the bug report forum section.

 

[Kainzo]

Plaguebomb also isn't silenced by voidsong, which is posted in the bug report forum section.

This has been fixed as of 4.70 patch (next restart)

 

[Eldrylars]

There has been a good bit of discussion regarding Beguiler currently.
As they sit right now Beguilers are a very strong class as they take very little player skill to do large amounts of damage.

With the Charisma adding in extra seconds to their disable they are able to lock down multiple players and line up damage that makes a Paladin cry. Mixed with their fast Mana regen and large mana pools they are currently one of the, if not the strongest 1v1 1v2 classes as this time.

I don't think this was the intention as beguiler is supposed to be more group support.

I know this is a change suggestion instead of a number fix, but I don't believe a number fix will help this one.

Current Beguiler Playstyle:

Piggify -> Plague Bomb(Delayed) -> Fireball - PlagueBomb(Activates) - >Pulse(500 damage by this point) -> beguile -> Repeat.
It does not take any skill to do this other then a very little timing skill.

The changes I would propose, I believe would be more true to the design of the Beguiler.

Piggify

Level 35
55(20(-.16 per charisma point)) Mana per second while channeled
25 sec Cooldown
You force your target (within 15 blocks) to mount a pig until damage has been inflicted on the victim, the caster uses any skills, or the caster runs out of mana.​

MassPiggify

Level 65 85(80(-.16 per charisma point))
Mana per second while channeled
1 min Cooldown
Enemies within 5 blocks of you are forced to ride a pig until damage has been inflicted on the victim, the caster uses any skills, or the caster runs out of mana.​

This would allow the skill to be a little more powerful as far as duration, but would force the beguiler to channel it, taking him out of the combat otherwise as well as draining his mana.

This would make beguilers have to pick their targets to disable and force the other teams to try to break it if they need their team member back. It would also stop the beguiler from being able to get 3 damage spells off in 1v1 scenarios as starting to cast would break the channel. This should effectively move the beguiler into a near skilless 1v1 god into a primary support caster.
@Kainzo @Delfofthebla @Balance Team ?

 

[victim130]

That would fix the mass piggify problem (Its just so poop in duration, even with some charisma) however, I feel like Beguiler really isn't nearly as godly as you think. I may just be bad at it, but I rarely am able to 1v1/1v2 someone and explode them instantly (lvl65vslvl65). For the most part, I end up kiting for around a minute unless I have friends with me to help. I will say that with a Paladin and Necro, I can be a pretty tough force. Otherwise though, only piggify is worth anything in real combat. Beguile is nice, but it really makes it hard to land skills in certain situations.

Pulse and Plaguebomb are really my only reliable damaging skills where other casters have many more than that. The real problem is that our combo works on everything and is hardly versatile. Though I don't feel beguiler should be a Support Mage. A heavy AoE burst mage with odd cc and battle field control is unique enough on its own. Kinda unsure of Wisdom tbh, but I do notice some mana problems in prolonged fights, so I don't think its that bad.

I also want to add in that, Masspiggify and pulse have some really short ranges, after my piggify burst, you can kite or even kick the pulse. This forces us to be close-med ranged with low hp and armor.

 

[Eldrylars]

All good points, the burst comes in with landing a direct PB + FB+Pulse and using beguile to keep them off of you long enough to get Piggy back up.
Glacial was confirming in the other thread that this discussion started in that he is usually able to get that combo off doing around 400-550(4-5 hearts) damage.

So I would not say you are bad at it, but the timing is close enough to deny another player in 1v1 almost any opportunity to fight back.

 

[look_out]

Their damage is fine imo... How ever their ability to land skills thanks to piggify and mass piggify makes that damage a little to much. Piggify prevents the player from using skills and pretty much makes then a sitting duck. As you said with charisma they have all the time in the world to set up their plague bomb - pulse - fireball combo... After that they just have to run around and beguile you until their cool downs are back and then do it again. Each round doing 500 ish damage. (glacial does work against me in town) Not to mention it goes through armor :X

However in team fights its a little different because of the chaos. They don't have time to set up this combo so most of the time they combo is split up throughout the fight. Meaning no one receives more than about 250 damage.

There is a lot of things to consider... I feel as though their fireball should be lowered so no damage is taken away from their team fighting but hurts their 1v1 fighting potential.

 

[Eldrylars]

Their damage is fine imo... How ever their ability to land skills thanks to piggify and mass piggify makes that damage a little to much. Piggify prevents the player from using skills and pretty much makes then a sitting duck. As you said with charisma they have all the time in the world to set up their plague bomb - pulse - fireball combo... After that they just have to run around and beguile you until their cool downs are back and then do it again. Each round doing 500 ish damage. (glacial does work against me in town) Not to mention it goes through armor :X

However in team fights its a little different because of the chaos. They don't have time to set up this combo so most of the time they combo is split up throughout the fight. Meaning no one receives more than about 250 damage.

There is a lot of things to consider... I feel as though their fireball should be lowered so no damage is taken away from their team fighting but hurts their 1v1 fighting potential.

Good dialog to continue, but remember their 1 v 1 superiority comes from being able to lock down their opponent and keep them piggied or beguiled with little to no time in between. Lowering their fireballs damage just means they will have to land one or two more spells before they kill you the same way.

On another note, Faux Bomb is still set to 100 Mana which is 1/10 of the entire mana pool for a spell that does no damage. It seems that since it should take much less effort to summon a fake PB it should also take much less mana as it does nothing other then look pretty. Seems like 30ish mana would be more appropriate.

What are your thought's on the idea of making Piggify a channeled spell?

 

[victim130]

Numbers could be tweaked a bit, but I honestly think Mass is useless in its current form. On that note, how would everyone feel about making beguile a 3.5 sec base cc with no scale and a 25 second cooldown? (Changed from a 2.5 base(0.163 scale per cha)

Good dialog to continue, but remember their 1 v 1 superiority comes from being able to lock down their opponent and keep them piggied or beguiled with little to no time in between. Lowering their fireballs damage just means they will have to land one or two more spells before they kill you the same way.

On another note, Faux Bomb is still set to 100 Mana which is 1/10 of the entire mana pool for a spell that does no damage. It seems that since it should take much less effort to summon a fake PB it should also take much less mana as it does nothing other then look pretty. Seems like 30ish mana would be more appropriate.

What are your thought's on the idea of making Piggify a channeled spell?

As for making it a cast time, its only really alright in a real fight. One of the biggest flaws of a Beguiler is their lack of mobility. This means after the lock down, most mobile classes can just cleave a beguiler. Though this is fine, I feel that a casting time on piggify will limit their mobility again, but towards chasing low HP targets. When pig is on cd, most classes can out run us and with our med/close range skills that all take time to land already PB is almost impossible to hit with your hoe while running and tossing it up won't catch up a running player. The biggest problem I see, is that the class has only a few damage skills and 2/3 of them are very close range in terms of mage classes. I would say that having another long ranged skill would make me feel a lot better having cast times on pigs, though more damage is probably not the way we want to go with this class. Maybe an increased range to follow the cast time? Not sure tbh

 

[look_out]

I don't think cast times are appropriate on CC... I just feel as tho there will be too many draw backs.

Simply making the cool down longer might do the trick... As it gives the other player more till to kill the beguiler.

 

[Delfofthebla]

It's true that Beguiler is a very low skill class. I'd argue that very poor skilled players cannot tap into it's potential, but just having a derp run around in circles chucking plague bombs is undoubtedly more beneficial than him doing anything else.

The combo of
1) Piggify
2) PlagueBomb (Lay next to target)
3) Warmup Pulse
4) Fireball upon finish

is undoubtedly one of the strongest combos in the game. It allows you to instantly deal 3 sources of your damage, all of which are above 100 (with moderate Int), to a single target, with the possibility of hitting 2 of those on other players. The damage numbers can get very absurd with this technique, but of course, it only applies to 1v1 situations.

I do not know what Kainzo originally envisioned for the Beguiler, but I know what it is right now. And that is a CC powerhouse that is one of the strongest 1v1ers, 1v2ers, and teamfighters in Herocraft. Is this wrong? Should this be changed? I don't know. But I know that adding or removing any skills will destroy the class structure, as well as the class balance. Beguiler has always been a tough one to balance, but at the end of Bastion, and the current version in Haven, I think is pretty close. Early Haven it was undoubtedly one of the stronger classes, but I quickly patched in Charisma dependencies and lower base damages for skills to alleviate those issues.

Numbers could be tweaked a bit, but I honestly think Mass is useless in its current form.

In Bastion, MassPiggify was on a 2 minute cooldown, and lasted for I believe 7 seconds. I thought this was odd, as Piggify was only 4 seconds. It seemed strange that the AoE version of your primary CC was actually stronger than your single target. It was also a "get out of jail free card", much like Layhands and old BladeGrasp.

A skilled Beguiler was able to win most fights without ever using the ability, but if he ever wanted to win for sure, he'd just have to pop MassPiggify and wait on his cooldowns. In order to rectify this, I reduced the cooldown to 60 seconds, and placed the duration below their single target version. Was this the correct thing to do? I dunno, but I still hear complaints about their strengths, so maybe...

Pulse and Plaguebomb are really my only reliable damaging skills where other casters have many more than that. The real problem is that our combo works on everything and is hardly versatile. Though I don't feel beguiler should be a Support Mage. A heavy AoE burst mage with odd cc and battle field control is unique enough on its own. Kinda unsure of Wisdom tbh, but I do notice some mana problems in prolonged fights, so I don't think its that bad.

I also want to add in that, Masspiggify and pulse have some really short ranges, after my piggify burst, you can kite or even kick the pulse. This forces us to be close-med ranged with low hp and armor.

I think your issue Victim is that you aren't really a caster player. The strongest ability any caster can have is Fireball, and their ability to consistently land it off cooldown is what determines their strength with the class. Piggify really makes it easy to get one or two off for free, but when fighting any decent player, a Beguiler must either kite until cooldowns expire, or have good Fireball usage.

I don't think cast times are appropriate on CC... I just feel as tho there will be too many draw backs.

Simply making the cool down longer might do the trick... As it gives the other player more till to kill the beguiler.

Long cooldowns promote kiting, as seen with classes like Mystic, Beguiler, and even Cleric, to some degree. A class that is forced to wait on cooldowns will resort to kiting until those cooldowns expire. I do agree that cast times on CC are not the most desirable thing though.

 

[victim130]

It's true that Beguiler is a very low skill class. I'd argue that very poor skilled players cannot tap into it's potential, but just having a derp run around in circles chucking plague bombs is undoubtedly more beneficial than him doing anything else.

The combo of
1) Piggify
2) PlagueBomb (Lay next to target)
3) Warmup Pulse
4) Fireball upon finish

is undoubtedly one of the strongest combos in the game. It allows you to instantly deal 3 sources of your damage, all of which are above 100 (with moderate Int), to a single target, with the possibility of hitting 2 of those on other players. The damage numbers can get very absurd with this technique, but of course, it only applies to 1v1 situations.

I do not know what Kainzo originally envisioned for the Beguiler, but I know what it is right now. And that is a CC powerhouse that is one of the strongest 1v1ers, 1v2ers, and teamfighters in Herocraft. Is this wrong? Should this be changed? I don't know. But I know that adding or removing any skills will destroy the class structure, as well as the class balance. Beguiler has always been a tough one to balance, but at the end of Bastion, and the current version in Haven, I think is pretty close. Early Haven it was undoubtedly one of the stronger classes, but I quickly patched in Charisma dependencies and lower base damages for skills to alleviate those issues.


In Bastion, MassPiggify was on a 2 minute cooldown, and lasted for I believe 7 seconds. I thought this was odd, as Piggify was only 4 seconds. It seemed strange that the AoE version of your primary CC was actually stronger than your single target. It was also a "get out of jail free card", much like Layhands and old BladeGrasp.

A skilled Beguiler was able to win most fights without ever using the ability, but if he ever wanted to win for sure, he'd just have to pop MassPiggify and wait on his cooldowns. In order to rectify this, I reduced the cooldown to 60 seconds, and placed the duration below their single target version. Was this the correct thing to do? I dunno, but I still hear complaints about their strengths, so maybe...


I think your issue Victim is that you aren't really a caster player. The strongest ability any caster can have is Fireball, and their ability to consistently land it off cooldown is what determines their strength with the class. Piggify really makes it easy to get one or two off for free, but when fighting any decent player, a Beguiler must either kite until cooldowns expire, or have good Fireball usage.


Long cooldowns promote kiting, as seen with classes like Mystic, Beguiler, and even Cleric, to some degree. A class that is forced to wait on cooldowns will resort to kiting until those cooldowns expire. I do agree that cast times on CC are not the most desirable thing though.

I will admit, aiming is not my strong suit, not at all lol and I said earlier, it is very possible I am just horrible at Beguiler haha.

Now, I won't deny it is a strong class, I just don't think much can be changed. If Plaguebomb was to be less damage, it would still shine in big fights, but then they would lose their 1v1 capabilities. I'm wondering what it would end up like if we gave them another damaging skill and reduced the damage on Plaguebomb. Possibly another AoE? Cowbomb? haha, just a thought because with timers on piggify, the same combo can be pulled, but with PB doing less damage, its less devastating then we have another skill to back us up. Could give it a warmup to discourage comboing it with pulse as well.

 

[malikdanab]

Lets bring this thread back to life. Basic rundown:

• Deals too much damage for a "Support Mage"
• Lack of warm-ups makes it too easy
• Lack of skills and over dependence on OP plague bomb.

 

[Dsawemd]

5.3 Beguiler Goal:
Make Beguiler a competitive class that is a Support Mage, and remove the class's AoE nuke role.

I contrast the idea of Beguiler Control to Bard Group Mobility. Simply and effectively, Beguiler would get one additional CC skill that has a big noticeable AoE effect like Accelerando or a good MelodicBinding does. This will create a control playstyle in combination with Damage nerfs, their existing CC skills, and better Attribute Scaling for Charisma than for Intellect.

MassPiggify is out, but what about MassBeguile? All players within a large radius of the Beguiler are Beguiled for a duration. This would be largely a defensive CC, or a CC to scatter a Party rather than group it for AoE. HC pvpers currently have few CC for scattering besides Tremor (or Totems, which most players do not stay near once placed, but that is not involuntary scattering it just forces the party to move.)